The transition from color wasn't a slow fade to black.
One second, Hiro Larson was stepping out of a convenience store, the condensation on a cold glass of coffee still damp against his palm. The next, his coffee was gone. The street was gone. The sun was gone.
Hiro stood in a pressurized void. It wasn't just dark, but more of an aggressive absence of light that felt like it was trying to swallow him while. He reached his hand out, but fingers brushing against nothing but a static-filled chill.
"What the hell?" he croaked. His voice didn't echo as he thought it might. It just fell flat, smothered by the endless vacuum.
"Language, Hiro. We've only just met, and already you're acting like a gutter-born urchin. So much for being a hero."
The voice was low-pitched, melodic, and entirely too cheerful for the circumstances. Hiro spun around, his boots making no sound on the invisible floor.
Floating three feet away was a nightmare dressed in a bespoke charcoal three-piece suit.
The creature was barely two-feet tall, its skin the color of a bruised plum. It had the face of a predatory cat, equipped with a long, needle-like nose, ears that tapered into jagged points, and a mouth that stretched too wide to be normal, filled with rows of serrated, shark-like teeth.
On its back, a pair of metallic, bio-mechanical bat wings twitched with a rhythmic, hydraulic hiss. A faint, sickly crimson aura bled from its pores, illuminating the creature in a halo of something like dried blood.
"Who the hell are you? Where f*ck am I?" Hiro's heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He tried to lunge forward, to grab the little freak by its tiny silk tie, but his muscles were instantly locked in place.
It wasn't something physical per se but more as if his brain had lost the password to its own nervous system.
"I'm the guy who's about to change your life," the creature said, adjusting its cufflinks with tiny, clawed hands. "Or end it. Really, the ball is in your court. Though, I suspect you'll be a boring little hero like the rest of them. My name is Malphas. You can call me 'Sir,' or 'Oh Great Arbiter,' or you can just shut your p*ssy mouth and listen before I decide your family would look better as a collection of human skins on my walls."
"You touch them, and I'll peel that ugly ass purple skin off your face," Hiro hissed. The fear was there, thick and suffocating, but the rage was winning. He wasn't a man who took threats well. Especially ones directed at his family.
Malphas let out a giggle that sounded like glass breaking in a blender. "Oh, I love the feisty ones. They break so much louder."
With a flick of a clawed finger, the void around them shattered and became a panoramic theater of atrocities.
Huge, flickering screens materialized in the darkness, showing scenes that made Hiro's stomach turn to lead. He saw his younger brother being fed into a massive industrial meat grinder, the boy's screams silent but visible.
Then, he saw his parents tied to stakes while building-sized blades swung like pendulums, slowly shaving layers of flesh away. It was a chaotic mess of gore, rendered in hyper-realistic detail. When he thought there wasn't more, a view of Earth came onto the screen. In an instant, without a warning, the entire planet blew up. It all felt so real.
Hiro fell to his knees, his breath coming in ragged, shallow stabs. The coldness of the void seemed to seep into his bone marrow.
"Stop it," he whispered.
"Stop it," he said again, this time in an enraged shout.
"It hasn't happened... yet," Malphas said, hovering closer until his cat-grin was inches from Hiro's nose. The creature smelled like ozone and sweet lilies.
"But the Gods are very particular about their entertainment. They want a Player. And, surprise! They chose you. If you refuse, or if you die too early, I will personally go back to your little mudball of a planet and turn everyone you've ever loved into a jigsaw puzzle of organs. Then, I'll frame you for it. You'll be the most hated monster in human history before you even take your last breath in a prison cell before the entire planet gets blown to bits."
The images vanished, leaving Hiro shivering in the dark. He forced himself to stand, his legs were shaking terribly. Pride was the only thing keeping him upright.
"What the f*ck do you want?" Hiro asked in a hollowed angry tone.
"It's simple, really. You're going to Yamatsuka," Malphas explained, his tone shifting back to that of a bored travel agent. "It's a world that operates on rules your tiny monkey brain usually associates with fiction. Think of it as an anime come to life, but with the safety rails ripped off and any big bad boss can show up to end you at any time. Somewhere in that world is an entity known as the End. Kill it, and you get your life back. Fail, and... well, kaboom! Earth gone."
"The End. Just kill a damn loser called the End and I'm out?"
"If it were just a loser, the Gods wouldn't need a disposable primate like you, would they?" Malphas rolled his eyes.
"The End is a god-tier threat. It could be a person, a monster, or a hidden disaster. You won't know until you're strong enough to see it. Until then, you live and grow. You play the game until you're the last Player."
The darkness began to pulsate with a violent, neon green light. The air grew heavy with the scent of cherry blossoms and exhaust fumes.
"Welcome to the transfer, Hiro. Try not to piss anyone off too early. In Yamatsuka, tropes are literal. If you act like a protagonist, the world treats you like one. If you piss off the wrong girl, she might just carve your heart out and keep it in a jar. Emotional trauma is a real status effect there. Don't say I didn't warn you."
The green light intensified until it was blinding. Hiro felt his body being stretched, his atoms vibrating at a frequency that shouldn't exist. When the light finally died down, the silence was replaced by the sounds of a city.
He was standing on a sidewalk. People were rushing past him. They were vibrant, colorful people with hair colors that defied biology and some had eyes that were just a little too large to be human.
The architecture was a dizzying mix of traditional Japanese pagodas and cyberpunk skyscrapers. Huge holographic advertisements floated in the air, flickering with Kanji[1] that Hiro found he could suddenly read.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZED: WELCOME TO YAMATSUKA]
Hiro blinked. The text stayed there, burned into his retinas.
"I'm in a fucking cartoon," he muttered, watching a girl with neon-pink twin-tails run past him with a piece of toast in her mouth.
"Don't get distracted by the scenery, Hiro," Malphas's voice echoed in his head, though the creature was nowhere to be seen.
"Check your vitals. You're currently in a 'Ghost State' while the world finishes rendering you. Once you're solid, the clock starts ticking. Access your stats. Now."
Hiro closed his eyes and focused on the center of his mind. A pane of translucent blue light snapped into existence, hovering in his field of vision.
***
NAME: HIRO LARSON
LEVEL: 1
CLASS: THE OUTSIDER / SALVATION
[ ATTRIBUTES: ]
* HP: 150/150
* MP: 80/80
* STRENGTH: 7
* ENDURANCE: 6
* AGILITY: 5
* INTELLIGENCE: 8
* LUCK: 2
* WILLPOWER: 12
[ ACTIVE BUFFS/DEBUFFS: ]
* DISPLACED SOUL: +50% Resistance to Mental Manipulation.
* MARK OF MALPHAS: -5 Luck. You are being watched by a Higher Entity.
[ SKILLS: ]
* STREET BRAWLER (LVL 1): Increases unarmed damage by 10%.
* IRON MIND (PASSIVE): High resistance to fear-based status effects. ]
***
Hiro stared at the vertical list. The numbers felt cold. His "Willpower" was high though, likely because he was currently holding back the urge to scream and start swinging at the air.
[ NEW QUEST ALERT ]
[ FIND YOUR SANCTUARY
DESCRIPTION: TRAVEL TO THE WESTERN DISTRICT AND LOCATE APARTMENT COMPLEX 'SAKURA HEIGHTS'. USE YOUR KEY TO UNLOCK THE UNIT.
REWARD: 100 EXP ]
"Great. A fetch quest," Hiro spat. "I'm being blackmailed by an evil winged cat in a suit to play a live-action RPG. Only thing he's missing is a top hat."
"Hey! I heard that!" Malphas's voice crackled like a radio. "Just follow the arrow, Hiro. And remember, in this world, death isn't a 'Game Over' screen. It's a one-way ticket to watching your mother get turned into mince-meat. So, keep your head on a swivel. The End is waiting, and its a lot more bloodthirsty than I am."
A golden arrow appeared on the pavement at Hiro's feet, pointing toward a shimmering skyline. Beside it, a floating counter began to tick down: 1,500 METERS.
Hiro took a breath, his knuckles lightening as he balled his fists. He didn't know this world, and he hated the things that had brought him here, but he knew one thing for certain: he wasn't going to let his family or planet die for some cosmic game and his pride at not wanting to be controlled.
[1] Chinese characters adopted into the Japanese writing system, acting as logograms where each symbol represents a specific meaning or idea. Used alongside hiragana and katakana, they form the core of nouns, verb stems, and adjective stems. They are essential for breaking up long, phonetic-only sentences.